Feature first-timer Raine Allen Miller directs this romcom urban-pastoral, goofing and freewheeling across the streets of south London with an virtually childlike innocence – shot by Olan Collardy in wealthy color with cartoony wide-angle streetscapes, and scripted by Nathan Bryon and Tom Melia. Unsubtle and on-the-nose although it undoubtedly is, there’s additionally an amiable, upbeat vitality.
It advantages from two sympathetic leads: Vivian Oparah (from BBC TV’s Dr Who spin-off Class) and David Jonsson. Oparah performs Yas, a wannabe designer, ready for folks to name her again for interviews for jobs. She finds herself within the gender-neutral toilets at a pictures exhibition and overhears just lately heartbroken Dom (Jonsson) sobbing in one of many stalls; Dom’s humiliation is then full when Yas asks him tentatively by way of the door if he’s OK, then has to inform him that this bathroom isn’t, as he assumed, the “gents”.
However Yas cheerfully befriends the depressing Dom as soon as he emerges and is incensed to listen to that he’s on his approach to a demeaning lunch date along with his high-handed ex and her new boyfriend, the only function of which is for him to be submissive and provides them his blessing. So the impulsive and irrepressible Yas exhibits up as nicely, pretending to be Dom’s assertive new girlfriend, an imposture which ends in chaos. However additionally it is a form of liberation for them each: Yas and Dom discover themselves strolling round cathartically collectively afterwards with no specific place to go, at one stage encountering a surreally solid A-lister as a road meals vendor, whereas Yas opens up in regards to the shortcomings of the person she just lately broke up with.
The issue was that he was a “non-waver”; after they had been on a bridge someplace, and other people on a vacationer boat under waved at them, Yas would all the time good-naturedly wave again however this man was too cool to take action, indicating a basic lack of humanity. As for the luckless Dom, one of many issues was that he had hoped to shock his girlfriend by putting goodies of their mattress, however they melted, resulting in a extremely unsexy misunderstanding. They hatch a plan to rescue one in every of Yas’s favorite vinyl LPs which her noisome ex nonetheless has at his flat, and naturally this results in extra wackiness, and – who is aware of? – there may very well be a spark between them.
Admittedly there’s not a lot in the way in which of nuance or realism right here, and as a veteran of youngsters’s exhibits, co-screenwriter Nathan Bryon perhaps provides this a bit an excessive amount of of a kids-TV really feel. Nevertheless it has an engagingly unpretentious model and Jonsson and Oparah are likable performers.
-
Rye Lane screened on the Sundance film festival and will likely be launched on 24 March within the UK and Eire, and on 31 March within the US on Hulu.
